Outrun AGA

[jotd]

leave it as floppy, whdload version will come later!

[agermose]

Originally Posted by jotd

leave it as floppy, whdload version will come later!

Hehe yes, but then I won’t learn anything :-)

[malko]

Originally Posted by agermose

Dynamic loading from floppy each stage, is the plan. There is no way everything fits in 2mb.
Don’t know much about hd loading. I’m not sure whdload is possible.

If I'm not mistaken, Ninja Warrior uses a dynamic loader during the game, during the level, as the player progresses.
This seems to me to allow new items to be injected during the level instead of trying to fit all the items of the level at once on RAM.
E.g.: load the palm tree, unload the palm tree, load the panels, unload the panels, load the houses, unload the houses, reload the palm trees if necessary, unload the palm trees, and so on. That way there's more room for the different cars that are supposed to be there all the time.
That was the point of my question. Is that what's planned or is the whole level dynamically loaded in RAM before the checkpoint (for the game no to pause) ?

Originally Posted by jotd

leave it as floppy, whdload version will come later!

That it runs from floppy doesn't mean it can't be installed on HD (just kidding do as you want).

[jotd]

Originally Posted by agermose

Hehe yes, but then I won’t learn anything :-)

okay. Then I would advise to do like I'm doing. Detect that you're running from whdload and then call whdload functions instead of OS functions.

Any example from my arcade conversions will show you how (slave + executable).

That way you can distribute upgrades of your game without having to adapt the offset for whdload patching.

[agermose]

Originally Posted by jotd

okay. Then I would advise to do like I'm doing. Detect that you're running from whdload and then call whdload functions instead of OS functions.

Any example from my arcade conversions will show you how (slave + executable).

That way you can distribute upgrades of your game without having to adapt the offset for whdload patching.

Thanks.
I’ll look into it down the road.
Btw I’m not using any OS functions, but custom boot/trackloader. Need every bit of memory I can squeeze out of it.

[TuRRIcaNEd]

I started a project of my own some years ago, and this was one of the results :

http://psychodelicacy.net/media/zip/..._beta_0_75.zip

If you reckon they're worth trying, you're more than welcome to do so...

(Admittedly the main tunes are between 182-226k at the moment, but I can probably bring that down by downsampling the drums and bass...)

Originally Posted by Toni Galvez

...you can ask DJ Metune to make all the soundtrack, because is the guy that have proved to make the best music conversion to MOD.

Cheers, Toni - what am I to you, chopped liver?!

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[TuRRIcaNEd]

Originally Posted by lifeschool

I think the original Outrun cabinet used x2 68000 chips, but I dont think it had a hardware sprite scailler?

Hullo sir, long time no see!

As I understand things, the second 68k was doing the maths for the sprite scaling and screen composition, so the hardware was indeed handling sprite scaling operations independently of the game logic. The bespoke graphics chips were incredibly powerful in their own right, but they still needed to be instructed what to display.

It's also worth considering that Sega's SuperScaler hardware not only used 2x68000 chips, but they were examples of the high-end (and thus more expensive) type which was happy to be clocked around 12.5MHz.

[Angus]

Originally Posted by TuRRIcaNEd

I started a project of my own some years ago, and this was one of the results :

http://psychodelicacy.net/media/zip/..._beta_0_75.zip

If you reckon they're worth trying, you're more than welcome to do so...

Sound really good, but is that the right note in Passing Breeze at 39 seconds?
Maybe the original sounds a bit weird there, seems like
a semitone or so out from what my ear expects. Probably just me. In any case, excellent work.

[TuRRIcaNEd]

Originally Posted by Angus

Sound really good, but is that the right note in Passing Breeze at 39 seconds?

As far as I can tell, yes (And I did just check against the original to be sure)...

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[I think the equivalent note is around 0:32-35]

Maybe the original sounds a bit weird there, seems like
a semitone or so out from what my ear expects. Probably just me.

For what it's worth, though I did a fair bit of the work by ear, I also used some tools to export the original music to MIDI and then to FastTracker XM as a guide... The really tricky part was reverse-engineering the jazz chords and reconstituting them in Cubase using the original FM sounds exported from MAME via the VOPM plugin.

It's not 100% exact because even 32-instrument tracker format doesn't have sufficient sample slots for all the chord inversions, but I got it as close as I could. It's worth pointing out that my intent was to convert the tunes with at least a little Amiga "flavour" rather than going for arcade-perfect... That's probably most obvious with "Magical Sound Shower", which I actually started trying to convert in 1996!

And they're still a work-in progress - hopefully the two Amiga OutRun projects will kick me up the arse to get them done.

In any case, excellent work.

Thanks ever so much - too kind!

[TuRRIcaNEd]

Originally Posted by agermose

If you read Adrian’s post again you’ll realise this is running in 32 colour mode.

Apropos of nothing, when I was starting on my (stalled) project several years ago, I grabbed a screenshot of the attract mode from MAME and imported it to DPaint, just to get an idea what the deal was with the colour count...

As you can see, 32 colours gets very close to the original with no colour tricks!

At the same time, one issue you're going to run up against is that the other traffic and roadside objects are going to require three bitplanes (8 colours) to get close to the arcade appearance (see below), so it's likely you're going to have to "race the beam" with the copper, which tied my brain in knots trying to figure out how to do it...

[jotd]

You're not chooped liver! There are several talented guys that can reproduce tunes faithfully. I'm not among them, but I can recognize when a tune is right or not, has the proper harmonies and chords or not. Yours tick all the boxes.

Those tunes look really good. How much chipmem do they take? I heard a .mod version of Magical Sound Shower which sounded very good that used 700k so it was not possible to use in a game. 200k as you're writing is probably acceptable. Very good compromise and result.

About taking a snapshot and dithering to 32 colors, I think you can do that for a lot of games, but what you need then is a real-time 32-color ditherer Those sega machines were beasts, and even A1200+AGA struggles to cope. See other thread about Shinobi

[TuRRIcaNEd]

Originally Posted by jotd

You're not chooped liver!

In fairness, I was being a bit facetious...

Yours tick all the boxes.

Thanks - too kind!

How much chipmem do they take?

In their current form, between 182k (Splash Wave) and 226k (Passing Breeze)... As I said above, it's a bit too big, but I reckon I can get that down a fair bit by downsampling the drums and bass.

About taking a snapshot and dithering to 32 colors...

No dithering there - it was literally a straight conversion to ILBM with a basic colour remap.

[alexh]

Slightly off topic, Magical Sound Shower the original arcade music (to me) sounds Caribbean and that the original composer Hiroshi Kawaguchi had intended that (after the intro) the main instrument be representative of a steel drum? Anyone else get the same feeling?

I see numerous remixes from Sega themselves (S.S.T. and Out Run 2006 / 2 SP) where that instrument has been changed to a Saxophone! Very strange to me to dilute this amazing Caribbean sounding music!?

[TuRRIcaNEd]

Originally Posted by alexh

Slightly off topic, Magical Sound Shower the original arcade music (to me) sounds Caribbean and that the original composer Hiroshi Kawaguchi had intended that (after the intro) the main instrument be representative of a steel drum? Anyone else get the same feeling?

The original lead instrument is very much a synth patch. I can't speak as to Hiro's original intent, but when I first tried to convert/arrange the tune back in 1996 I went with a steel drum sample in part because I didn't have the tools to extract the original instruments at the time, and I ended up leaving it as it was as a nod to my original attempt...

[Angus]

Originally Posted by TuRRIcaNEd

As far as I can tell, yes (And I did just check against the original to be sure)...

[ Show youtube player ]

[I think the equivalent note is around 0:32-35]


For what it's worth, though I did a fair bit of the work by ear, I also used some tools to export the original music to MIDI and then to FastTracker XM as a guide... The really tricky part was reverse-engineering the jazz chords and reconstituting them in Cubase using the original FM sounds exported from MAME via the VOPM plugin.

It's not 100% exact because even 32-instrument tracker format doesn't have sufficient sample slots for all the chord inversions, but I got it as close as I could. It's worth pointing out that my intent was to convert the tunes with at least a little Amiga "flavour" rather than going for arcade-perfect... That's probably most obvious with "Magical Sound Shower", which I actually started trying to convert in 1996!

Mission accomplished! Sounds like an Amiga playing it's arse off! Lovely job.

[TuRRIcaNEd]

Originally Posted by Angus

Mission accomplished! Sounds like an Amiga playing it's arse off! Lovely job.

Thanks ever so much!

[agermose]

Originally Posted by TuRRIcaNEd

Hullo sir, long time no see!

As I understand things, the second 68k was doing the maths for the sprite scaling and screen composition, so the hardware was indeed handling sprite scaling operations independently of the game logic. The bespoke graphics chips were incredibly powerful in their own right, but they still needed to be instructed what to display.

It's also worth considering that Sega's SuperScaler hardware not only used 2x68000 chips, but they were examples of the high-end (and thus more expensive) type which was happy to be clocked around 12.5MHz.

No the 2nd cpu is only dealing with road generation.
The main cpu calculates the zoom value and the base size for each sprite, which the hw sprite chip uses to scale and draw the gfx.

[TuRRIcaNEd]

Originally Posted by agermose

No the 2nd cpu is only dealing with road generation.
The main cpu calculates the zoom value and the base size for each sprite, which the hw sprite chip uses to scale and draw the gfx.

Thanks for clarifying!

[saimon69]

I remember your tune rendition and were very good, it also helped me to create my reverb effect for the high scores (not sure i sent you that) - now the 200k of space would be a problem outside AGA of course, so i wonder if the general midi set of instruments i found for fasttracker/milkytracker can help in case of a version for OCS/ECS that i still wish to happen ^^

[malko]

Originally Posted by alexh

Slightly off topic, Magical Sound Shower the original arcade music (to me) sounds Caribbean and that the original composer Hiroshi Kawaguchi had intended that (after the intro) the main instrument be representative of a steel drum? Anyone else get the same feeling? [...]

+1 .
Have always associated this music with that instrument.
As I am curious, I am wondering if TuRRIcaNEd can change his track to include a steel drum ?